Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Chan-Chu. But I think it's Colin -- Tim Vine

Just remember that science also says that you are nothing more than a vat of chemicals and that there is no ultimate purpose to your life. Also remember that science says that there is no such thing as free will that your actions are a combination of your environment and your genetic programming.

While science has been wonderfully beneficial to us as a species, I think a world run by scientists would be as scary as the (Western) world when it was run by the Catholic church.

As for the alt text, I just got through a semester of sequences and series, so I immediately thought of p-series and noted that that number isn't going to converge... But then I managed to remind myself that it was break. What is the significance of 0.05, though?

oracle989 wrote:Oh gods, religion mentioned in the comic. We've all seen how that Atheists thread is immortal! MAN THE BUNKERS!

Read that comic again please. Because when I read it, I see no mention of religion. Plenty of mentions of science (four by my count) one of which is in the phrase “looking for answers beyond science”, but there is no mention of religion. Allusion, perhaps, but not outright mention.

Indeed. If anything, it's a variation on the flood victim joke. (Just the details version)

Spoiler:

Religious person hears that a huge storm with flooding predicted is coming, and orders to evacuate. Religious person does not, confident that God will save them. During the course of the joke, Religious Person turns down offers of help from a neighbor driving away, another neighbor in a boat when flooding happens, and helicopter when flooding has put the Religious Person on the roof, with other variations of help thrown in as per the joke teller's whim. Religious Person drowns, goes to Heaven. Religious Person asks God why God didn't save them. God replies "I tried. I sent storm warnings, your two neighbors and a fricken Helicopter!"

- aka $Deity$ provides Humans with the ability to solve their own damn problems with SCIENCE.

heuristically_alone wrote:I want to write a DnD campaign and play it by myself and DM it myself.

heuristically_alone wrote:I have been informed that this is called writing a book.

As for the alt text, I just got through a semester of sequences and series, so I immediately thought of p-series and noted that that number isn't going to converge... But then I managed to remind myself that it was break. What is the significance of 0.05, though?

It's a referral to the statistical test of significance. If something is greater than .05% likely to happen through random chance, it's not considered a significant correlation.

oracle989 wrote:Oh gods, religion mentioned in the comic. We've all seen how that Atheists thread is immortal! MAN THE BUNKERS!

Read that comic again please. Because when I read it, I see no mention of religion. Plenty of mentions of science (four by my count) one of which is in the phrase “looking for answers beyond science”, but there is no mention of religion. Allusion, perhaps, but not outright mention.

Science simply means the gathering of data through observation of phenomena and experiments. Whatever the rules of this universe are, I want to know them... even if the science leads to a multiverse of branes, an ideal being, passions that can affect spacetime, or nothing except a pale blue dot infested for one short gigayear, then silence forever.

Not to mention "I begrudge nobody their sources of solace". Even if we take the allusion as a direct reference and the "beyond science" in question to be explicitly religion, he's saying: "there's nothing wrong with being comforted by your religion if that's your thing, but I'm not going to just pray for better health, I'm going to look for practical, scientific solutions to my problem, because those are the kind of solutions that work... bitches". The closest to "bashing" is saying that prayer or whatever is ineffectual except as a psychological comfort, but that there's nothing wrong with using it as such, so long as it's not used as a substitute for science... which works, bitches.

SerialTroll wrote:While science has been wonderfully beneficial to us as a species, I think a world run by scientists would be as scary as the (Western) world when it was run by the Catholic church.

How many scientists have you met in person? While the world should never be run solely by one group of people, scientists are far preferable to Medieval theocracy.

SecondTalon wrote:Indeed. If anything, it's a variation on the flood victim joke.

I thought it was more talking about faith healing and alternative medicine, especially since this is something Randall has brought up before and is more closely related to the medical issue and the role of science in society (IMO).

cjcurrie wrote:If something is greater than .05% likely to happen through random chance, it's not considered a significant correlation.

SexyTalon wrote:Indeed. If anything, it's a variation on the flood victim joke.

I thought it was more talking about faith healing and alternative medicine, especially since this is something Randall has brought up before and is more closely related to the medical issue and the role of science in society (IMO)

.Hm. Maybe it's just me that interprets comments of the "looking for answers beyond Science" nature to be coming from a standpoint of Science|Faith and the two being in opposition. (nevermind that saying Science and Faith are in fights is like saying Chocolate Ice Cream and a 45mph speed limit are in opposition... aka What The Hell Does One Have To Do With The Other?)

heuristically_alone wrote:I want to write a DnD campaign and play it by myself and DM it myself.

heuristically_alone wrote:I have been informed that this is called writing a book.

I know I've been beaten to this already, but I'll post it anyway just in case somebody wants it over-explained a bit differently...

The alt text is a reference to statistics: see the Wikipedia page on "Statistical Significance". Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I remember the p-value being the probability that you would observe your results if your null hypothesis is true (the null hypothesis is usually when there is nothing special going on, such as a coin being fair or a study finding no correlation between gender and skill). For example, say you were trying to determine if a coin is fairly weighted. You flip the coin, and it lands tails fifty times in a row. You say that the coin is not equally weighted, and your p-value would be [imath]\left(\frac{1}{2}\right)^{50}[/imath], or on the order of 0.000000000000001. Because your p-value is so small, you're sure that the coin is not fairly weighted. In fact, since the p-value is less than 0.05 (5%), you could say that you are "confident" that the coin is not fair. There is nothing special about the 5%, it's just a commonly used reference. In my high school class, I remember also having to use 10% and 1% at times.

As a side note, I also immediately noticed the presence of the white-hat-guy. OK, so maybe I noticed the tree first, but I noticed him before I started reading the text anyway.

SerialTroll wrote:Just remember that science also says that you are nothing more than a vat of chemicals and that there is no ultimate purpose to your life. Also remember that science says that there is no such thing as free will that your actions are a combination of your environment and your genetic programming.

While science has been wonderfully beneficial to us as a species, I think a world run by scientists would be as scary as the (Western) world when it was run by the Catholic church.

What's wrong with being a unique vat of chemicals?

I never quite understood what "ultimate purpose" was given by any of the various ascientific systems of thought that was so appealing and would somehow disappear if they weren't around.

As for free will, all science says is that a will that is somehow separable from the universe doesn't exist. But is that a great loss? How many times would you ever do something that wasn't informed by your past experiences in some way? And if you did do something out of character, there was probably something that caused you to make that decision. We have "free will" in the sense that we can't be forced to do something we don't want to do by another person's mind alone, and that the decision making process is so complex in any given person that a random person couldn't fully predict what you would decide before you decide it.

I'm not sure what's so scary about a world run by scientists, especially compared to a world run by politicians?

Randall, I love the comics and I don't know what is happening in your personal life, but the notes I've read over the last few months suggest someone you love is sick. If they can get better, I hope they do. If they can't, I hope you get to spend as much time as you can with them as you can.

And if the comics are fewer and further between, then I don't mind. I love the perspective you give into the human mind. It is clever, irreverent and funny.